Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXXV

We have been doing the "Long Game" series for what, a dozen years?

Well, we are pretty damn close to the event horizon where this is becoming a short game.

It is still gobsmacking that we have yet to design a surface combatant of any utility since the passage of Goldwater-Nichols at the height of the Cold War.

It is a clear case of systemic institutional failure that we blew up CG(X) because we had zero ability to control our worst tendencies, and that we seem happy to slug along with our glorious but crotchety stretch-SPRUANCE CG's as the guardians of our CVNs.

DDG(X) is still vapor ware. If FFG(X) winds up just being a stretched LCS, then we just need to fire everyone and nuke the accretion-saddled acquisition system from orbit. Just have the Australians design our fleet architecture for a decade until we can train up a new generation. They seem to get it.

Besides our friends Down Under, you want to see a serious surface force who is serious about building a fleet and getting ready to go to war at sea?

BEHOLD!

Three Type-52C (a very adequate 7,000 ton displacement DDG) and two Type-55 CG (it ain't a DDG at a displacement of 12,500 and 112 VLS on FLT-I). All right off the production line. I can smell the fresh paint from here.

Look at that picture in detail. The Chinese are dead serious about dominating their half of the Pacific and as much of the Indian Ocean as they can.

Meanwhile, we are still struggling to figure out how to train our officers in basic seamanship.

If this does not make you angry and motivated, then for the sake of our Navy and the nation is serves, go away. Retire. Go home. Find a hobby. Let others step in to the breach who actually give a damn.

H/t TS.